Bradshaw, Wayne (2026) A Vernacular Renaissance: The Ocker Highbrow in Australian Literature. In: [Association for the Study of Australian Literature]. p. 38. From: ASAL 2026 Conference Australian Literature in the Digital Age, 29 Jun - 3 Jul 2025, Brisbane, Australia.

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Abstract

As a high-water mark in the nation’s literature, Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life (1903) is perhaps best compared to works like Patrick White’s Voss and Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria for the importance with which it treats ways of being in so-called Australia. Articulate, witty, and often absurd, the novel also represents the genesis of what might be called the “Ocker Highbrow” in Australian literature, a tradition that has experienced renewed interest in recent years. In the quintessential example of this tradition, Furphy contrasts the remarkable erudition of his narrator, Tom Collins, with his semi-literate compatriots, interrogating and subverting notions of high- and low-brow culture and complicating what the literary might look like in a society consisting of squatters and miscreants. In the Ocker Highbrow, artistic seriousness exists in constant tension with droll idiom, and the delicacy of the human spirit is often relayed through moments of absurdity and violence. The irreverent treatment of serious subject matter, the commingling of vernacular and austere language, and a pervasive sense of the violence, crassness and absurdity inherent to colonial life accounts for the utility of the Ocker Highbrow as an avenue for settler-Australian writing. This presentation considers the ways in which the works of Michael Winkler, Wayne Marshall and Patrick Marlborough represent contemporary examples of an Ocker Highbrow tradition that traces back to Such is Life. Like Furphy, these authors navigate the perpetual crises of modern Australian culture through the mediating power of anachronistic language, fictional histories and the troubling of chauvinistic cliche. Using examples from Shirl, Grimmish, Nock Loose and Henry Goes Bush, this paper also asks what it is about the cultural conditions of the twenty-first century that makes the Ocker Highbrow tradition so appealing to a new generation of writers.

Item ID:	92568
Item Type:	Conference Item (Abstract / Summary)
Copyright Information:	© 2026 Association for the Study of Australian Literature.
Date Deposited:	06 Jul 2026 23:22
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1302 Communication > 130203 Literature @ 100%
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